Sunday, 25 July 2010

One year on...

Last week I had the pleasure of spending four days with Pat O´Brien from Cork who I taught to windsurf from scratch pretty much 1 year ago today. Pat has been in touch with myself from time to time and I was aware that he was improving very, very quickly, despite sailing only weekends and whatever freetime he could wangle. The fact is that Pat has come along amazingly in only one year, he taught himself to waterstart and is now starting to get going on a 104 ltr board, excellent stuff!

Well, he came back to me wanting to iron out some stance issues and make headway towards that Holy Grail of shortboard sailing, the carve gybe. We had some pretty challenging conditions while he was here (20-40 kts in Sotavento) but Pat dealt with it admirably and was blasting along down there with the best of them. His stance issues are gone now (see pic) and I´m pleased to report that he sailed out of a great carve gybe on his last day at Cotillo (nasty little shore break aswell), so he´s a happy man and, therefore, so am I.

It´s fantastic to see someone improve so much in such a short space of time- I´m full of admiration, it just shows what you can achieve with a little time and alot of determination. I´m absolutely certain that this time next year we´ll be looping together at Punta! Well done Pat.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Welcome to the site!Aswell as regular features and news updates from Fuerte, I am going to be using this site to promote my windsurfing clinics.
After 15 years on the island,having competed in the PWA freestyle world cup and now representing Fanatic Boards and North Sails, I have decided to give something back to the sport which has given me so much over the years.
My aim is to provide clinics "tailor-made"for each individual, with a strong emphasis on practical in-the-water instruction, backed up by on-the-beach tuition and video analysis. The consistent conditions here in Fuerte make learning so much easier and, perhaps equally important, more fun than the typically inconsistent, cold UK - why not come over for a week and improve your windsurfing by a year!!!I can help with any manoeuvres from carve-gybe through to advanced jumping and freestyle, just email me with your wish list and we'll take it from there! Over the next few months, I am going to be video-chronicling manoeuvres which you can check out on the right in my tricktionary sections. This will give you some idea of the things we can work on, or, if you can't make it over here, you may find them useful to help understand and break down a manoeuvre you would like to learn (hopefully, the slow-mo will help in this respect!).Just click on the trick and scroll down..........Anyway, keep checking it out as I have loads more in my bag of tricks and will be updating as and when I get the footage.If you're interested, e-mail me on gibboinfuerte@yahoo.co.uk See ya in Fuerte? Stephen.............